Category: Usgenweb Projects

Monica Schirmer Eshelman has sent in her abstract of the 1906 deaths mentioned in the St. Joseph Gazette and the St. Joseph News-Press. She has since commenced working on 1905 which should arrive soon, considering her dedication!

In my PACT Project Update at the end of December, I mentioned I was contemplating a hectic year and needed to get organized in a hurry. Not only am I still not organized, but this year so far has greatly exceeded my expectations busy-wise — and it’s only just started!

Adding to that, I’ve been unable to work on my personal research with any regularity for about five years. I’ve got boxes of stuff to scan and document, as I’m endeavoring to Go Digital. For one thing, my printer went feets up, so printing everything like I used to isn’t an option.

I also got the “bug” again the other day when I had to dig through one of those boxes. I found what I was looking for (and I’m going to write about it soon, as it’s so KEWL!), but I also found a ton of stuff . . . [Yes! There’s more!]

Monica Schirmer Eshelman has sent in her abstract of the 1895 deaths mentioned in the St. Joseph Missouri Herald and Daily News. She’s able to work faster because there are now only two newspapers, but also because the further you go back, the fewer obituaries and death notices are available. But she still parties on! Thanks, Monica!

Sometimes, but not that often, people will contact me about errors in cemetery transcriptions from old records or the grave markers. Usually, these are an easy fix if the marker is available. If it is not an obvious typographical error, however, I have found if I just make the correction, some one else will come along later and say, “No, it should be . . .”

My current policy is this: Obvious typos and misreadings will be corrected as soon as possible. However, in general, I don’t edit things other people have written. There was a TON of work done on these MOGenWeb sites before I got here (the work by former Pettis County CC George Willick is a good example) and I usually have no way to contact the original contributor. The emails are “dead” — if they were referenced at all to begin with.

The USGenWeb county sites were flooded with queries in their early days. Later, the mailing lists and message boards at Genforum.com and Rootsweb.com were used extensively for this purpose. Now, Genforum.com no longer accepts new posts, and the Rootsweb mailing list servers haven’t worked properly for quite some time. For that reason, I’ve created mailing lists for researchers to use if they so desire. The groups for Amelia County, Virginia, and Andrew, DeKalb, Gentry, Pettis and Saline counties, Missouri, are available now at Google Groups. You can also find them via the Mailing List links on each county’s page. Because there is a quota for creating groups, Taney and Worth counties will not be done until sometime next week.

It’s taken weeks to clean up, but I think I caught most of the missing files and images. Please, if you find missing things, let me know. A lot of pages and files were removed from the server because they were compromised. But I still have “good ones” — it’s just a matter of figuring out what needs to be replaced. So please, if you find a problem, let me know about it!

If you’re a DeKalb County researcher, there is good news for you. The wills from the DeKalb County Will Book 1 have been uploaded and some of them are real goldmines. As always, some of them are no help at all — the guy who leaves his entire estate to his surviving children, but doesn’t name them? Or his wife? In contrast, and for a giggle or two, check out the will of John . . . [Yes! There’s more!]